Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Value addition to naturally coloured cotton

Dr. M.T. Dodmani and Dr. L.B. Kunnal. UAS Dharwad, ARS Dharwad Farm, 580007, Karnataka, India, Dharwad, India

Naturally colored cotton was used for preparing garments. This cotton underwent processing in four stages viz., ginning, spinning, weaving and garment manufacturing . In ginning process one quintal of coloured cotton yielded 35 kg lint, 64 kg seed and one kg waste. The 35 kg of lint under went further processing in spinning process and yielded 29.69 kg yarn and 5.31 kg waste. The 29.69 kg yarn underwent further processing in weaving process and yielded 28.96 kg of cloth and 0.89 kg waste. The 28.96 kg cloth is equivalent to 106.28 meters of cloth. While preparing shirts, 1.28 meters of cloth as waste material was obtained. Finally, 42 shirts were prepared from 105 meters of cloth. The total value addition to one quintal of coloured cotton by processing indicated that an additional value to the extent of Rs.5875.03 was created in the course of processing kapas into cotton textile. The break up of the same at different levels of processing was ginning Rs.327.53 (5.57%), spinning Rs.781.25 (13.30%), weaving Rs.1626.07 (27.68%) and garments Rs.3140.18 (53.45%).